Getting Hit Hard – And Not Staying Down
“It’s not how hard you can hit. It’s how hard you can get hit and still keep moving forward.” Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa in, well, Rocky Balboa.
Tag: outlook
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Teaching People To Be Helpless
Most recently I had a conversation with a gentleman who is a Marine, a veteran police psychologist and an avid supporter of self-defense. The conversation started because I had been asking questions about families and the environment set dependent on whether the family itself – that being the mother and father (or other primary care-givers)…
Managing COVID-19 Restriction Anxiety
Folks, welcome to another morning in America. It’s Sunday morning, roughly 10am while I write this. In a lot of place, under normal circumstances, a lot of people would either be getting ready for church, coming home from church (depending on which service they attended), having a relaxed brunch with their family or have been…
Age and Assumptions
Most of my readership knows I’ve written before about how age is simply a number. All too often people seem to carry beliefs that some capabilities and disabilities accompany certain ages. We expect children to start walking at a certain age, give or take a month. We expect them to start talking (coherently) at a…
Expansive Outlooks
One really spectacular benefit of social media is that it allows you to follow those you choose, ignore those you want to and share news or commentary on your day as you see fit. There are a great many people who use it purely for trivia or entertainment. There are many companies that use it…
Touching Another’s Soul
A long time ago a friend of mine told me that psychologists are just overpaid bartenders who don’t serve you drinks. While that’s an oversimplification of both professions, if you stop and think about it there’s some truth to the outlook. A great many people with problems talk to their bartender… and the more they…
Miles Instead of Years
Some years back when I was responsible for fleet maintenance for my police agency, we kept track of the service life of our patrol vehicles by how many miles they had on them. Another agency I knew of tracked the service life of their patrol vehicles according to service hours. We scheduled maintenance according to…
Solve Problems Like You’re Dancing In The Rain
My family once owned a dog that we named ThunderStorm and just called Storm. He was a chocolate Labrador from a big family and, full grown, weighed about 100 pounds. The odd thing we discovered about him, from the earliest days we had him as a puppy, was that he loved to go out and…
Six Characteristics of the Mentally Strong
Have you ever noticed that some of your friends or family never seem quite as stressed or lacking in control of a given situation as others? Have you ever wondered why? What makes them so special? How come they never seem to sweat when something goes sideways? Here are a few reasons why they might…
The 12 Best Life Hacks
In today’s computer age, days where you can’t look around without seeing someone on their “smart” phone, and times of everyone being connected nearly full time, the word “hack” has come to take on a whole new meaning. It is essentially used to mean “something that makes your life easier or an easier and faster…
2018 New Year Resolutions
Near the end of every calendar year… or in the first few days of a new year… huge numbers of people make resolutions with the goal of improving their life. Some of those resolutions are very specific and equally unrealistic. For example, after someone has been a cigarette smoker for years (if not decades), they…
Life’s Simplest Lessons
Recently I saw an image through the wizardry of social media and, after having read through it, thought about just how true it was. The title was “Simple Formula for Living,” but that didn’t really describe the list of items included. As I read them, I felt they more described lessons to be followed for…
Defining You
As happens all too often in my household, my son asked me a question that forced me to carefully think through my beliefs and values before offering an answer. I have to think carefully because I know, for sure and certain, he’s already trying to form that next question so if I’m not as specific…
The Butterfly Affect in Life
Plenty has been written about “the butterfly effect.” Whole movies have been made about it from dramas about how minor changes we make can change the future, to science fiction movies where someone consciously tries to manipulate the present or future by changing something seemingly minor in the past. This entry is neither drama nor…
Seven Rules of Life
If you Google “rules for life” you get 863 MILLION returns (in under 2/3 of a second). There are whole books written on the subject. You can find lists with as few as three rules and as many as 75 rules. Every now and then as I surf the Internet (and life), I come across…
Brightest Lights During The Darkest Times
NOTE: This blog isn’t being written, or even approached, with journalistic structure or professionalism in mind. The topic is suicide: awareness and (hopefully) avoidance or reduction. The statistics and data listed are gleaned from various sources and listed at the end. The rest of this is the result of input and comment from family, friends…
Understanding the Trauma of Trivia
One of the most important parts of communication is understanding or at least attempting to see and understand the point of view of the person you are interacting with. The ability to do this makes the difference between taking everything literally or taking things as they are potentially meant. The same statement can have a…
What Age is “Old”?
I remember being a little kid… maybe six or seven years old, and my parents were “old” to me. Of course, my parents were 35 years older than I, so they were in their early forties; hardly what I would call old these days. Then again, I know a couple people today who are in…
Are You a Warrior? BE a Warrior
From dictionary.com, the definition of “Warrior:” A person engaged or experienced in warfare; soldier. A person who shows or has shown great vigor, courage, or aggressiveness, as in politics or athletics. I would submit to you that all too often in today’s society the term “warrior” is too narrowly applied to a profession and inadequately…
The Power of An Aware And Active Mind
How many times have you been out in public some place – it could be the mall, a city street, a restaurant – and you see those folks who are so busy looking at their cell phones that they are completely oblivious to what’s going on around them? How many times have you seen someone…